It was my first time using a miter saw-or any other power tool, for that matter-and I had just finished meticulously crosscutting four 7-inch faces for a plain wooden box. Despite being a novice woodworker, I was proud of my accuracy, with each piece perfectly square at 90-degree angles.
But when it came time to rotate the saw to a 45-degree angle to cut the miters along each edge, I ran into a dire situation: The sides of the box were too tall to fit against the saw's fence and safely make clean, accurate cuts. My design was flawed; I should have planned to create a smaller box from the get-go. Should I attempt the cuts anyway and risk sending wooden shrapnel flying in unpredictable, erratic patterns around the woodshop, or should I go back to the drawing board?
ChatGPT, the now-omnipresent artificial intelligence (AI) chatbot taking over the internet, is what got me into this mess in the first place. And when I desperately needed advice, the disembodied computer brain left me hanging.
A "SIMPLE" EXPERIMENT
A few weeks beforehand, I had provided ChatGPT with what I (mistakenly) thought to be a straightforward prompt: "What's a basic woodworking project I can start with?" In a matter of seconds, it cranked out a suggestion for a "simple wooden box."
I was heartened: It was finally time to revisit a skill I had written off completely back in middle school after a botched attempt at building a gumball machine. A substitute woodshop teacher had "helped" me cut the wood by taking over completely, severely burning the wood.
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ONE OF THE 'GREATEST THREATS' TO THE PACIFIC NORTHWEST ISN'T WHAT YOU THINK.
EXPERTS ARE PREPARING THE REGION AGAINST THE THREAT OF DANGEROUS VOLCANIC MUDFLOWS, KNOWN AS LAHARS, WHICH COULD INUNDATE THE COMMUNITIES SURROUNDING MT. RAINIER IN AS LITTLE AS 30 MINUTES.
THE WORLD'S TOUGHEST ROW
They rowed 3,000 miles across the Atlantic, battling unpredictable weather, chaotic seas, and finicky equipment. But what they discovered gave them profound new insights into the power of the ocean.
HOW TO DIY OFF-GRID SOLAR
SPEND THE TIME UP FRONT AND PLAN IT CAREFULLY TO AVOID DISAPPOINTMENT
Are We on the Verge of an ARMS RACE in SPACE?
RUMORS OF A RUSSIAN SPACE NUKE, ALONG WITH OTHER SATELLITE-TARGETING WEAPONS, HAVE MADE GEOPOLITICAL TENSIONS EXTEND INTO ORBIT.
Fresh Fingerprints on an Ancient Statue
A CLAY FIGURINE HAS SPENT MILLENNIA incomplete, waiting at the bottom of a lake for its long-dead craftsman to finish the Iron Age-era statuette.
Quantum Entanglement in Our Brains
IT HAS LONG BEEN ARGUED THAT THE human brain is similar to a computer. But in reality, that's selling the brain pretty short.
The Tools of Copernicus
WAY BACK IN 1508, WITH ONLY LIMited tools at his disposal, Nicolaus Copernicus developed a celestial model of a heliocentric planetary system, which he described in hist landmark work De revolutionibus orbium coelestium. It was a complete overhaul of our conception of the universe-one that, unfortunately, earned him the ire of the Catholic church for decades after his death-and forever changed the way we look at the stars.
Building a Sixth-Generation Bomber Raptor
THE GLOBAL COMBAT AIR Programme (GCAP)-a project by the U.K., Italy, and Japan to develop a sixth-generation stealth fighter-has been busy at the drawing board reshaping its vision of the future of air warfare. And judging by the new concept model unveiled at this year's Farnborough air show, that future has big triangular wings.
The Electroweak Force of the Early Universe
TODAY, THE UNIVERSE AS WE KNOW IT IS governed by four fundamental forces: the strong nuclear force, the weak nuclear force, electromagnetism, and gravity.
This Ancient Fossil With a Brain and Guts
WE KNOW WHAT FOSSILS LOOK like. For example, typical dinosaur fossils are bones turned to stone and preserved from the passage of time, located, if we're particularly lucky, in large collections that can be reassembled to represent the beast they used to prop up in their entirety.
